Dear Friends,

I used to dream of being a writer, I yearned for it.  As a boy I was always filling notebooks with poems and story ideas and fragments of writing; I was also a voracious reader.  My parents probably dreaded the sight of the Scholastic catalog handed out each year in grade school, do they still do that I wonder?

Luckily we were (I now realize) middle to upper middle class and they could afford to indulge my eager and curious mind.  Usually stories of mystery, or history, or often trivia and ghost stories and books about folklore and sci-fi and fantasy.  Like I said an ever hungry reader, I remember days when there was nothing on the three tv channels of the time (yeah I am that old folks) if I could find nothing else, I might page through our dictionary or encyclopedia…

(it was the early 1980’s and this whole Internet thing was still emerging into it’s place in society at the time; these days I can often fall down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia or other online sources quite easily)

I won awards for composition, and even took part in some state wide Youth Writing Conferences.  Later on in Middle and High School I got involved in the Debate, Drama, and Forensics (informational speeches)  tournaments.  One of my two High-school letter’s was in DDF.   (the other was Theater…)

In my late teens I discovered Paganism, and given the old joke about Pagans being people of the Library, as opposed to being a people of the book, is it any wonder I was drawn to it?

I kept at it, writing poetry and amateur journalism here and there.  Then I started this blog, and briefly achieved the dream of being a professional writer… for a Pagan magazine that soon folded.

Around the same time the magazine folded, my first serious relationship…my first Partnership and the life I had moved across a continent to begin… crashed down around me.

Through out it all, I have collected, and kept in storage, a large collection of books; heck I still have some in boxes back in Alaska…

Now, recently through some twists of fate and a modest family inheritance, I am a home-owner.  I do not just have some book-shelves, I have a Library.   Books, and reading, and writing, have always been there in my life; the last few years they have been much more in the background.  But now I have a Library!!

I can walk up to my shelves and see the books of poetry and fiction and religion and spirituality and magick that have inspired and informed my life’s path and dreams.  I can leaf through many of my old notebooks and folders with fragments of my writings and poetry and recall that strange thrill that comes from communion with one’s Muse.  I can open some of them and smell the incense-smell of some of the book shops I used to frequent.

The Library, and the rest of the house, are still being put in order as day by day boxes are unpacked and our lives are sorted in the magical act of transforming this house into our home… but tonight I stretch my fingers and crack open the eggshell of my years long retreat from the written word to share these thoughts with you.

Peace,

Pax / Geoffrey